Blog Archive / November 2008

Really cool innovation: turns all cell phones into GPS devices

I'm letting you know about a really cool new innovation that in essence turns all cell phones that have a SIM card into GPS enabled devices (even the old ones)!

It's a Finnish founded & lead company called BlueSky Positioning and you can find their interwebz pages here:

http://www.blueskypositioning.com

The company is founded...

Finnish startup Xiha Life gets expansion funding from China

www.xihalife.com a finnish fast-growing startup with a bit of an unusual background has announced that they have closed a significant financing round with a chinese investor.

I am involved in Xiha as an advisor and a small owner.

Xiha is a multilingual social network that's available in over 40 languages and...

Blyk gets 40M EUR

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One of Finland's "super startups" www.blyk.com has just received an additional 40 million EUR of financing. You can read the story from their blog here:

http://about.blyk.com/2008/11/18/blyk-raises-e40m-and-paves-the-way-for-...

That has to be one of...

Panel at slush

I will be moderating/chairing a panel at Slush Helsinki event.

It's with Jussi Laakkonen for Assembly, Peter Vesterbacka for Connected Day, Timo Vuorensola for StarWreck and Ilja Laurs for GetJar.

Sign up to Slush and come see it. Will be cool stuff;...

Fruugo presentation and interview from SIME 08

It took me a while to get the video online; I'm currently here in the Finnish countryside, barely within the reach of the interwebz (and the trip isn't on my Dopplr, shame on me!). Converting the video from an "obscure digicamera format" into something that is reasonably sized and compliant...

Morning TV tomorrow in Fin again

I will be at MTV3 "Good morning Finland" show again tomorrow morning. Live at around 07:00 in the morning. Brutally early wakeup call coming up again :)

The topic will be www.Muxlim.com and how we can do more in trying to help immigrants to adapt to our nordic society. I'll be...

Morten Lund in SIME

I'm at SIME here in Stockholm. Day 1 over and done with. One of the best takeaways from the first day was seeing Morten Lund speak about angel investing, serial entrepreneurship and startups.

Pic: SIME poster in the movie theatre wall, taken with my iPhone.
Lovin' the title "Archangel Investor"...

Good advice by Dopplr CEO on entrepreneurship

Dopplr's CEO LIsa Sounio recently made an interview that's now published here:

http://www.pestaola.gr/lisa-sounio-dopplr-ceo-interview/

It's an interesting read, and gets into the "entrepreneurial spirit" pretty fast there. She gives some rather good advice:

(quoted from the article:)
Top 3 tips for entrepreneurs

1. Go ahead even though the idea is not fully clear, you learn
2. Figure...

About 10k visitors during the first month

Just letting you know that this blog has had about 10 thousand unique visitors according to Google Analytics during the first month of its life.

Biggest incoming traffic has been the result of two spikes: 1) the finnish digimedia writing about www.IRC-Galleria.net stuff and about 10 to 15 other blogs...

Get on Dopplr and try out the public profile stuff

Most of you probably know www.dopplr.com the service that brings serendipity to travel by letting you know where your friends will be and when you will meet them next. Dopplr is one of the leading sites in intention broadcasting in this case it's a specific intention tied to travel plans...

Muxlim gets nominated for SIME Awards and was the star of SIME Copenhagen

www.muxlim.com has "did it again" first by being the star of the show at SIME Copenhagen and then winning the nomination for the SIME Awards in the category of "Best Internet Strategy".

Image: Mohamed El-Fatatry speaking at SIME Denmark
Source: the SIME blog at: http://blog.sime.nu/

And as you might remember...

Tane.li Blog gets "TechCrunched" on Fruugo gossip

TechCrunch US just published a blog entry about Fruugo that refers this blog and me personally:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/05/is-stealth-startup-fruugo-stumbling...

As did ArcticStartup:

http://www.arcticstartup.com/rumors-circling-around-fruugo/

Looks like the gossip is heating around Fruugo. Interesting to see if they will just keep it cool, or possibly get engaged in the dialogue and conversations now. Some may claim that this...

Looking for Coders

We are looking for talented programmers to join us. At least www.runtoshop.com and www.muxlim.com are hiring.

There's a tangible monetary reward for you if you refer someone to us and we hire him. So check your contact networks for any movement.

The tech-stack used is: Java, PHP, MySQL, Django, etc. Web technologies....

Big organization communications vs Startup and Agile

I spent a big part of last weekend with my Whisky Syndicate in our annual meeting. Its really not as much of a whisky syndicate as it is a group of business people keeping in touch and sharing views, interests, a healthy sense of humor, and the latest challenges in...

IRC-Galleria remains the most active social media on the net

www.irc-galleria.net has been the most loaded/active website of Scandinavia since about 2006. Back in September of 2006 this article (in Finnish) was published claiming IG as the most busy website in Scandinavia. Since that time the key numbers have gone up significantly.

The level of user activity remains at a...

I'll be speaking at the Otaniemi Forum on Thr 6.11.

I'll be speaking on Thursday 6th of November at this event. It's been organized by a bunch of public and such Finnish tech-industry houses, like; VTT, Otaniemi.fi, Technopolis, Helsinki University of Technology, and oddly enough even the centre for metrology and accreditation is one of the organizers.

Others speakers...